
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH General Editors: Peter France and Stuart Gillespie This groundbreaking five-volume history runs from the Middle Ages to the year 2000. It is a critical history, treating translations wherever appropriate as literary works in their own right, and reveals the vital part played by translators and translation in shaping the literary culture of the English-speaking world, both for writers and readers. It thus offers new and often challenging perspectives on the history of literature in English. As well as examining the translations and their wider impact, it explores the processes by which they came into being and were disseminated, and provides extensive bibliographical and biographical reference material. Volume 1 of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English originates with what medievalists have long known, that virtually everything written in the Middle Ages in English can be regarded, one way or another, as a translation, and that medieval understandings of what constitutes literature were significantly more generous than many modern ones. It uses modern as well as medieval understandings of translation to inform its discussions (the two understandings have a great deal in common), and it aims to situate medieval translation in English as fully as possible in its various cultural contexts: this includes, in particular, the complicated inter-relations of translation throughout the period into Latin, and (for the Middle English period) of translation in French. Since it also understands the Middle Ages of its title as including the first half of the sixteenth century, it studies what has survived of nearly a thousand years of translation activity in England.
This volume investigates the foundational role of translation in shaping English literary culture from the Middle Ages through the mid-sixteenth century. Editor Roger Ellis, alongside general editors Peter France and Stuart Gillespie, presents a critical history that treats translations as autonomous literary works. The text argues that medieval English literature was fundamentally defined by translation, challenging modern definitions of authorship and literary boundaries through a comprehensive analysis of cultural and linguistic exchange.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and historians recognize this volume as a foundational reference for understanding the development of the English literary canon. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which is tailored for researchers and students of medieval literature and translation theory.
Page Count:
500
Publication Date:
2008-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0191529818
ISBN-13:
9780191529818
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